Naked Terror

By some karmic circumstance, we have stumbled onto a limitless supply of naked news. By which we mean current stories about nudity, mainly female because hardly anybody, this side of a Hollywood flak, gives a damn about a guy who takes it all off. But naked women are still a threat. Seeing one such is enough to warp a young boy for life, while a handful can destroy a neighborhood. Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, seeing a naked woman in the flesh is enough to drive a man to god knows what. Take the following . . .

The local Community Board in Long Island City is trying to block a liquor license sought by Gus Drakopoulos, who operates the Sin City strip club in the Bronx. Drakopoulos wants to open another topless club near the Queensboro Bridge. For denizens of the great American heartland, LIC is just a neighborhood in the borough of Queens. We might call it a working class section of New York City, except that the Big Apple lost its working class years ago. Nowadays we’re all office types or artist types or model types or computer geeks, doing heavy business on our cell phones in the street as we step on other people’s feet. So what has the Community Board got against Gus, who wants to open a Gentleman’s Club beneath the fumes and the racket of the Queensboro Bridge. If he only admits gentlemen, he won’t have any customers anyway.

Gus faces heavy opposition. Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan has demanded the city Landmarks Preservation Commission consider the two-story brick building, formerly the site of Smiley’s Flowers, a landmark for its historical value, or maybe the lingering floral scent among the exhaust from streams of vehicles heading from Manhattan to the ‘burbs. At any rate, this would prevent Gus from changing the place into a strip club. Speaking to reporters, Ms. Nolan said, “Our community needs an arts center. We don’t need threats from an unscrupulous business owner.”

What threat? “I’m not in the pizza business,” says Gus, “I’m in the adult club business.” Thank goodness, because in New York City if you can’t get pizza made by Italian hands, fagedabout it! Gus assures us this is going to be a classy place–no sleazy crackheads hanging around. Instead, he plans a club with 12 karaoke rooms and three bars. Not to mention the topless gals doing their things. Gus’ Bronx club is called the Sin City Cabaret. With all those karaoke rooms, and the guys boozing and singing, maybe he could call this one the Din City Cabaret.

What about that threat? Gus says, if they don’t give him a liquor license, he’ll go nude nuclear. He means the gals will appear both topless and bottomless. Legally, if he doesn’t serve liquor, almost anything goes. So, warns Gus, Long Island City if you don’t play ball, I’m going to sic all these naked, naked dames on you. Gus, we dare you! That’s enough to make all those gentlemen forget their karaoke and even their manners. Oh, it would be a sight to make the late Mr. Smiley grin ear to ear.